Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) National Chairman Nily Falic, speaks to FIDF delegates in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Photo: Haim Zach.

JNS.org – Israel’s “minimal requirement” for the Palestinians is the recognition of a Jewish state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday at a meeting with Friends of the Israel Defense Forces supporters from the U.S. and Panama.

“The minimal requirement from our point of view is to say, ‘Alright, do you recognize the Jewish state,'” Netanyahu said. “The other day, Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas) said, ‘I’m not even going to negotiate recognizing the Jewish state,’ and then he went to deal with Hamas.”

The U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed last month after Abbas’s Fatah party signed a unity pact with Hamas, the Gaza-based terrorist group.

Addressing Iran’s nuclear program and the negotiations surrounding it, Netanyahu said, “Iran seeks to destroy the state of Israel and builds atomic bombs for that purpose. … Iran today has thousands of centrifuges, thousands of kilograms of enriched uranium to make a bomb. A bad deal would let them keep those capacities. It’s better to have no deal than a bad deal.”